Quotessence
Home / Authors / Nigel Slater
Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllScentsBreakfastJapanese CuisineRosesFlowerFlowersLebanonPresentation DesignSeafoodVarieties

Famous Nigel Slater Quotes

“There is a smell, rich and sickly sweet, so pungent I feel as if I am being choked. A smell that is both new and curiously familiar. Notes of the most intense jasmine with a back note of vanilla and overripe mango. The sea is too warm, and I cut short my night swim. As I pass through the garden, lanterns now glowing, the perfume has faded a little, it is less hypnotic, softer and more floral than before. Trumpets of deep-crimson hibiscus have closed for the night, chains of bougainvillea and a plant I do not know are the only ones in flower. It is this last from which the scent is emanating. Each blossom has thick white petals, crisp, like icing on a wedding cake. Almost too perfect to be real, the petals darken in the centre to a pale-yellow with a deep-saffron eye. Strangely, the scent is stronger from a distance than close up. My mystery flower is frangipani, or if we are talking in botanical terminology, Plumeria, the name given to honor the seventeenth-century French monk and botanist Charles Plumier. I note that the almond filling known as frangipane was once perfumed with the extract, though we are a long, long way from Bakewell. There are few perfumes I would call hypnotic-- tuberose, Casablanca lily, jasmine perhaps-- but frangipani is up there with them. I go back to my room, head throbbing, drunk on flowers.”

FlowerScentsHypnoticEast AfricaMauritiusFrangipaniPlumeria
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“Thin, like paper, light and doughy in the middle, crisp and delicate as honeycomb at the edges, the appam is tempting even before it is filled with a ladle of lush vegetable curry. It shares many of the attributes of a pikelet or crumpet, a round disc of batter, bland and comforting, but stretched until its edges are as fine and crisp as Belgian lace. Of all the yeasted dough goods throughout the world, the appam is the lightest and, at its best, the most fragile.”

FragileThinPancakeSri Lankan
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“The land on which my home sits was originally woodland but was converted to pasture in the early 1700s by the Guidott family. The meadows provided grazing for the cattle that supplied much of the city's milk and cream. The farmhouse was known as Cream Hall and it is here that city dwellers would come to take tea-- the farm was renowned for its cheesecakes-- and in 1740 a Cake and Ale House opened 'offering cakes dipped in frothing cream, custards and syllabubs.”

HistoricalHomelandDairyPasturesCheesecakeBackground
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“At a café in Tokyo I order cheesecake. It comes in a thick slice with a lightly caramelized crust in the centre of a small white plate, the glaze gradually darkening to a deep cream towards the middle. To the top of the plate is what at first I take to be a logo, a golden crest. It dawns on me as I eat and sip my tea that it is in fact a carefully mended crack. A delicate piece of kintsugi, an exquisite golden repair.”

TokyoCheesecakeCafeKintsugi
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“It is late afternoon, darkness is falling and a stall in the town square is glowing like a candle. Tiny punnets of bright-orange berries on the twig-- sea buckthorn-- and jars of cloudberry jam jostle with honey and crimson lingonberries. I will not carry jars or bottles in my luggage, but I pick up a couple of cartons of berries to eat raw. Buckthorn lives true to its name, and after a few minutes of parting the berries from their branches my thumb feels like a pincushion. I pick up a pocket-sized jar of jam and the fruit is tart, extremely so, and therefore right up my street. I nibble the berries as I walk. Cloudberry jam, in common with most berry preserves, has too much sugar for me but it is good too, bright-tasting and sharp. I will bring it down at breakfast tomorrow, to eat with Lapland yoghurt. The buckthorn jam is pleasing, though not enough to risk bringing a jar wine in a suitcase. It does keep a little of its acidity when simmered with enough sugar to make it keep. That is probably why it works, like damson, blackcurrant, plum and gooseberry. The more tart the fruit, the better the jam.”

BerriesFinlandJamsCloudberriesBuckthorn
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“A cardamom bun is less sticky than the cinnamon-scented kanelbullar; more giving than the currant-freckled curls of the Chelsea bun, but just as much fun to unravel as you sip your coffee. You can spend a pleasing afternoon making a batch of buns. The milk-enriched dough is spread with ground spice, sugar and butter, sliced into wide ribbons then fashioned into an untidy knot. Each cook seems to have their signature tangle. The surface is speckled black and white, a gritty mix of caster sugar and ground cardamom. The salt and pepper of Swedish baking and my drug of choice.”

BakingSwedishBunsCardamom
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“Thin sheets of warm roti and mana'eesh are best for scooping food from plate to mouth like tactile, edible cutlery, but bread is better for sponging up the delicious detritus from the plate. The soft, open crumb swells with cream or curry sauce, gravy or meat juices, to leave us replete. A Chinese host may take a mopped plate as a sign that more food is needed, yet I would rather think of each painterly flourish as a signature, a thank-you note to the cook.”

BreadWipingLeftoverOn My Plate
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“The tulips are usually in flower in March, a carnival of orange, saffron, rust and purple-black. Once they have gone over, as we gardeners say, their petals brown and frail like antique satin, the bulbs will be lifted and replaced with fully grown foxgloves, whose faded notes of lilac, pink and speckled cream will stand tall till it is time for the dahlias to go in.”

ColorsTulipsFoxgloveReplanting
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“It starts with salad, but the notion soon spreads itself throughout my cooking. From today, never again will I leave any toasted remnants of meat or vegetables in the pan. That goo, that savory butterscotch, contains the soul of the meat, its juices, bubbled down to a sticky, golden nectar. Salty as Parmesan, as sweet as honey, it will never again remain unused. Never again will such goodness be left behind in the pan to be dissolved in the washing-up water.”

LeftoversBaconLardNever AgainCooking Class
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“Breakfast in a rather dingy hotel room, near the Roman ruins of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. There are bowls of yoghurt; blue-and-white jugs of fresh mint, a basket of dimpled sheets of warm flatbread folded like delicate manuscripts, and pots of honey and fig jam. A lone brick of stale Madeira cake sits on an oval white plate. It is labelled 'English.”

BreakfastLebanese
Book:A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts
Create image

“I cannot go any further without mentioning my favourite biscuit of all time, now sadly, tragically, extinct. The oaty, crumbly, demerara notes of the long-forgotten Abbey Crunch will remain forever on my lips. I loved the biscuit as much as anything I have ever eaten, and often, in moments of solitude, I still think about its warm, buttery, sugary self.”

ThinkingLongStillsSelfMomentsForeverFoodSolitudeNotesForgottenLipsWarmAll TimeFavouriteBiscuitsCrunchAbbey
Author:Nigel Slater
Create image